When the ancestors of humans and heptapods first acquired the spark of consciousness, they both perceived the same physical world, but they parsed their perceptions differently; the worldviews that ultimately arose were the end result of that divergence. Humans had developed a sequential mode of awareness, while heptapods had developed a simultaneous mode of awareness. We experienced events in an order, and perceived their relationship as cause and effect. They experienced all events at once, and perceived a purpose underlying them all. A minimizing, maximizing purpose.
page 134, Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
Table of Contents
Why Stories of Your Life?
I first became familiar with Ted Chiang by way of the excellent movie Arrival (2016); the movie is based on a short story by Ted Chiang called Story of Your Life. I then read another short story collection by him (Exhalation) in 2022 during the reading challenge that year. At that point I put this particular short story collection in my to-be-read pile so its been there for at least three years now.
Like I mentioned in the previous review, I am slowing down my reading pace for the month of September and there is no better way to do that for me than reading a short story collection. So I placed a hold for this book at the library and picked up my hold this past weekend.
Let’s get into it.
The Book
It has been a long time since I’ve reviewed a short story collection so this review is a intriguing change of pace as far as my review style goes. I’ll start with the basics – this is a collection of (mostly) science fiction stories, it is perhaps more appropriate to call this speculative fiction to cover the story that doesn’t really make any use of science in its narrative.
All the stories here are very different from each other. I found them all interesting to read, some more than others. The short story Divison by Zero was a mildly horrifying read with the way the character slowly falls into a derangement and bouts of depression. Seventy-Two letters deals with automation, job loss, eugenics and even mentions kabbalah. Hell is the Absence of God has mildly disturbing religious imagery in it with angelic visitations being equivalent to natural disasters.
Ted calls Tower of Babylon Babylonian science-fiction and that does seem an appropriate descriptor for what that story was. It is also how I learned that the word onager to refers to a beast of burden in addition to being a type of siege weapon. Always love when I learn a word has two very different meanings.
The last story in the book Liking What You See: A Documentary deals with the topic of beauty and how others perceive beauty. I recall watching a video about a YA dystopian novel that dealt with this exact topic. The book was Uglies by Scott Westerfield and the video was by the ever wonderful cari can read. The 2000s YA dystopian era sure was…something. From what I recall of cari’s video Ted’s handling of the topic was much more thought provoking and nuance.
I primarily wanted to read this collection to read the story Arrival (2016) was based on so it is not surprising to me that it is the best story in this collection. It is somewhat different from the movie in so far it is a lot less action oriented and more interested in philosophical musing about linguistics, physics, and its use of non-linear storytelling. I found it to be just as intriguing and thought-provoking as the movie and I recommend people both read the story and watch the movie.
Conclusions
This was what I expected from a Ted Chiang short story collection – well written, thought provoking set of stories with one story that stands out over the rest. I would love to read more short story collections in this vein from other authors – especially speculative fiction short story collections. Feel free to recommend me more collections along those lines.
I am not quite sure what I’ll be reading next week, I don’t have any holds coming in. I may end up purchasing and reading one of the big 2025 releases that I have on my to-be-read pile or I take a couple weeks off from reading. We’ll see.
That’s all from me this time around, see y’all in the next one.
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